Elizabeth Adams's Blog, page 47

Road Trip 3: Kirkjubæjarklaustur

I thought it might be helpful at this point to post a map of the island. Iceland is about the size of the state of Kentucky. You can see Reykjavik, the capital, on the lower left. The road we were driving runs all the way around the edge of the island. We traveled east, through Selfoss, along the southern coast below the big glaciers of Myrdalsjokull and Vatnajokull, not quite as far as Hofn, which you can see on the coast at lower right. Kirkjubæjarklaustur is a little village between those two glaciers (the name is below the word SUDERLAND in the lower center of the map.)

I woke early at our simple guesthouse (above, beneath a gorgeous double waterfall), and went for a walk by myself along the river. As had been true the day before, I realized I was seeing strange formations, but didn't know what they were. I've since learned that the region surrounding Kirkjubæjarklaustur has been devastated repeatedly by volcanic events, throughout recorded history since the settlement of Iceland (around 900) and long before that.

"Kirk" is the root that means church, and "klauster" ("cloister") refers to two religious foundations - a monastery and a cloister of nuns - that were there long ago. There are stories about impropriety between the monks and nuns, and of good nuns and bad nuns who are buried near significant rocks (above) or swam in the lake above these cliffs.

The Systrastapi (sister's rock) is where two of the convent's nuns were buried after being burned at the stake. One of the nuns was accused of selling her soul to the Devil, carrying Communion bread outside the church, and having carnal knowledge with men; the other was charged with speaking blasphemously of the Pope. After the Reformation, the second sister was vindicated, and flowers are said to bloom on her grave, but not that of the first nun. (Wikipedia)

As was true in many places where Christianity was introduced, pagan religion and folklore became interwoven with the new faith. This persists even now. In one area of strange volcanic cones, the interpretive sign (below) carefully explained the geology, and then went on to caution visitors to show respect because "the hidden people" had been seen near these formations. (You can see the volcanic cones behind the sheep in the last photo of the previous post.)

It all makes sense to me: in such a strange landscape animated by inexplicable and sudden, life-altering events, and where the rocks take human-like forms, I too could believe in elves, trolls, and magic.

This sparsely-populated region has a name, Öræfi, that means "wilderness." For many years it was cut off from the rest of the island; this was the last part of the ring road to be completed. The reason is that this area contains two volcanic sand deserts: huge expanses of black sand that is subject to sandstorms in the summer, and to "glacial bursts": flash floods that arise when water that has built up under the glaciers (melted through the heat of the volcanoes that lie beneath them) reaches a critical mass. When that happens, the glacier actually lifts up, the water spills out, and rushes down across the sands, taking out roads, bridges, and anything in its path. There was a glacial burst a few days after we returned to Reykjavik, making front page headlines, and undermining one of the bridges we had just crossed. As we drove across these vast plains, I thought about the early settlers, crossing on horseback or even on foot: it seems incredible. But it must have been even worse to have to cross a lava field.

Öræfi has been a no-man's land because of its history of catastrophic volcanic activity; the most active volcanoes in Iceland are located beneath these glaciers. To the west of Kirkjubæjarklaustur is a huge lava field that was laid down during the 1783 -1784 eruption of Laki, or more correctly, the Lakagigar, a volcanic fissure that's part of the Grimsvotn volcanic system. This eruption was absolutely devastating: it released clouds of poisonous hydrofluoric acid and sulphur dioxide that killed 50% of the island's livestock, and the resulting famine killed a quarter of the population. Basalt lava flowed over a huge area, 14 cubic kilometres. The eruption caused a drop in global temperatures that caused crop failures in the Northern Hemisphere and possibly as far away as India; it changed the monsoon patterns and caused a famine in Egypt that killed 1/6 of the population there. It's estimated that six million people died as direct result of the Laki eruption, making it the most deadly eruption in recorded history. I only learned this after we traveled through that lava field, now covered with thick moss that makes it, ironically, very beautiful.

Road Trip 2: Eyjafjallajökull to Kirkjubæjarklaustur

Our plan was to drive as far east on the first day as we reasonably could, to give ourselves the most time in the Vatnajokull glacier region, so we had booked a guesthouse in the small village of Kirkjubæjarklaustur. Neither one of us was prepared for the vastness or scale of the landscape. I found myself at a loss for words, and still do: "breathtaking" and "magnificent" seem trite; the emotions I felt the most strongly were simply awe and amazement at the beauty of what we were seeing. Unfortunately it's a beauty that photographs can only partly convey. The feeling of being surrounded by such a landscape -- one that dwarfs you and overwhelms you at every turn -- is quite different than viewing an image of it in two dimensions, limited and bordered by a frame.

Eyjafjallajökul is a stratovolcano completely covered by a glacial ice cap. (Jökull means glacier, and comes from the same root as the Middle English ikel which gave us "icicle.") When the volcano erupted in 2010, this farm was completely covered with ash and had to be evacuated. Ash is a good fertilizer though, and the fields came back with better yields than ever before. The family now runs a small visitors' center on their land, with a movie and exhibits about the eruption.

Wild whooper swans over a glacial river. These were the first of many that we saw.

Skógafoss waterfall.

In contrast to the landscape, the villages in this region are far apart and tiny, containing a handful of houses and almost no services. Tourism has increased since the financial crisis, and some enterprising Icelanders have opened guesthouses or even built small, modern, Scandinavian hotels tucked into the shelter of the mountains. We stayed in two guesthouses with very basic accommodations, providing either bedding or sleeping bag spaces, and two quite different hotels. In all cases, a buffet breakfast of cheese, sliced meats, tomatoes, cucumbers, muesli, yogurt, toast, jam, coffee and juice was served - it just varied in how many choices there were and the relative fanciness of the presentation. We had taken a cooler along, packed with basic things like bread and flatbread, peanut butter, cheese, juice, apples and carrots. We were able to supplement that with evening meals at gas stations that had snack bars attache, where you could get Icelandic basics like hot dogs, lamb burgers, fried fish, lamb stew, and ice cream: Icelanders eat ice cream all year round.

At the guesthouses and eating places we were among other travelers in fuzzy wool sweaters, parkas and rain-pants, and no one seemed like they were there for a five-star vacation, but rather to hike and experience the same things we were there to see. Everyone was cold and wet and blown by the constant wind. There were a lot of Japanese tourists, and there was a great deal of expensive camera equipment. Both the tourists and Icelanders were friendly everywhere we went, and we kept running into some of the same travelers as we moved along. But a lot of the time, we were the only people at a particular stopping place. I had wanted to experience that sense of isolation and silence in the landscape, and we did.

Road Trip 1: Urriðafoss to a first glimpse of Eyjafjallajökull

We left Reykjavik early Monday morning and headed out on Rt 1, the ring road that goes all the way around the coast of Iceland. We had a lot of driving to do, because we were trying to get as far east as we could that first night, to give ourselves more time in near the large glacier, Vatnajokull. Elsa had told us to make a note of places we might want to stop at on our return trip, but after the small city of Selfoss, we immediately became distracted by the breathtaking landscape, and ended up stopping a lot more than we'd planned to look around and take photos.

Iceland is almost entirely uncurated and devoid of touristy signs as well as warnings about danger. You pretty much visit at your own risk, and have to exercise your won good judgement. I like that, frankly.

There are small, understated signs along the road with a symbol indicating natural features of interest. The Icelandic word for waterfall is "foss," so when I noticed a sign saying "Urriðafoss" we decided to veer off and see it, and were glad we did. Urriðafoss has one of the highest columes of water of any waterfall in the country, and there were once plans to build a power plant there because of its proximity to Reykjavik - which fortunately hasn't happened. It was wild and beautiful and deserted.

The countryside here is fairly pastoral, with large fields filled with sheep, or hay that's been baled and wrapped into plastic "marshmallows." Iceland has many more sheep than people.

To the right of the mountain above you can see our first glimpse of a glacier - that's Eyjafjallajökull, one of the smaller ice caps in Iceland but certainly one of the most famous.

It was thrilling to come closer and closer to the glacier and begin to see it take form, but we had no idea of what to expect on the road ahead. The weather on the coast is notoriously uncertain, and we knew that we might only get glimpses of the glaciers and mountains through clouds and fog.

Soon we had the mountains on our left, and black volcanic sands stretching from the right side of the road all the way to the sea. Across the sands we could see the Westmann Islands, like an apparition of mountains arising from the sands rather than the ocean. We'd be taking a ferry to this archipelago, which contains the newest land in Iceland, a few days later.

Reykjavik Botanical Garden (Iceland 1)

We flew from Boston on the hip new no-frills Icelandic airline, Wow Air. The flight left in the evening, losing time zones as we went, and arrived at Keflavik airport around 4:30 am local time. We picked up our rental car and drove through the flat lava fields toward Reykjavik as the first light revealed an overcast, drizzly sky.

I took a short nap after breakfast, we drove with our host to a nearby phone store to get Icelandic SIM cards for our phones, and went to the fish store. After a fine dinner we went to bed early, slept ten hours, and woke up feeling remarkably fresh.

That afternoon I took a walk in the rain through the park near our friends' house. It was Sunday, and also my birthday. When I discovered this Chartres-style labyrinth, I decided to walk it, and the meditative tracing of its paths steadied my mind and helped me place myself in this new environment.

Soon I came upon the entrance to the Reykjavik Botanical Garden. The gate was open, and I went in.

Past a bust of the garden's founder, on a tall stone plinth, was this Steinhaed, or rock garden - one of several on the grounds.

It was planted with alpine species, many completely new to me, including a number of remarkable gentians:

Gentiana farreri

 

There was sea-holly:

And, of course, mosses: a gentle preview of the dominant type of plant we'd be seeing for the next five days on our road trip around the southern coast of Iceland. Looking back, moss-on-lava was about the only thing I was prepared for, on what turned out to be an epic journey.

Voyage

In a short time, I'll be heading back, heart in hand, to Iceland.

We're going to visit dear friends, native Icelanders who were our former neighbors in Vermont. This time we're staying longer, we'll be doing some shopping and cooking for ourselves, biking daily to soak in the thermal pools at Laugardalur, and renting a car in order to take some day-long excursions near Reykjavik and a four day overnight trip along the southern coast of the island. I am totally excited, in spite of the fact that it's already cold there, and will no doubt be raining and wretched part of the time. That's Iceland, and it's OK.

Back when we used to downhill ski, I loved being on mountain summits and ridgelines during all kinds of weather: the aliveness of nature becomes awareness of your own aliveness, which then transcends our usual sense of separateness from the world we not only inhabit, but of which we are an intrinsic part. The encounter with nature's power, strangeness, and unpredictability grants us permission to accept our own. I have no desire to push the limits of safety or sanity: the sea, in particular, is a force that I respect and fear. We will see volcanoes, waterfalls, and glaciers  -- from a safe distance. But I've never felt closer to creation than in Iceland, where it is happening all the time, in a raw and primal way unknown to most of us who have spent our lives in far older, worn, and docile landscapes. I've wanted to go back ever since our plane lifted off the lava fields of Keflavik and flew over the glaciers and icebergs of Greenland, almost incomprehensibly returning my changed self to the highways and cities of the urban northeast, and the tree-covered mountains of New England.

Iceland gave me the inspiration to draw again: the four years since our trip in the fall of 2011 have been the most fruitful and productive artistic period of my life, as well as propelling me on an inner journey where I've thought about creation and creativity in entirely new ways. I'm returning with anticipation but without specific expectations, hoping to be as porous as possible to whatever I encounter.

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I may be posting here during the trip, but I'm not sure about internet access. I will not be on FB, and will not be crossposting there; if you'd like to see photographs from time to time, please follow my feed on Instagram.

Work, Travel, Leisure

It's been a beautiful summer here. Great weather, a little hot, but bearable; some happy traveling and visits with friends, both here and out in the country; and a lot of lovely evenings when we simply took our dinner and some wine over into the park, lay down on a blanket, and relaxed along with our fellow Montrealers under the canopy of leaves while young people played their guitars and flutes, ducks splashed on the lake, and seagulls made lazy circles overhead until the sun set.

At the same time, it feels like la rentrée - that Quebec term for the fall back-to-school, back-to-work "re-entry" - came early for me this year. With several big projects happening, both for Phoenicia and in our design/communications business, I've had to be super-organized and focused for the past six weeks. Choir rehearsals for the fall season begin tonight. A week from tomorrow, I'm leaving on a two week trip about which I am very very excited. And when I get back, there's going to be a lot of work, a lot of singing, and deadlines coming up right away.

This is, I admit, how I'm happiest: being busy. I don't like feeling like it's out of control, but I've always preferred to be a little over-scheduled and under a certain amount of pressure  -- often self-applied -- than being at loose ends. Many of my best friends are people who are also like that, which makes sense. I've found, however, that Canadians (and maybe French Canadians in particular) are much more laid back than Americans, and that's been good for me. They take weekends off. They take long vacations, and actually go away, often far away. They don't take their work home with them. They've taught me the value of stopping to relax and do nothing - not even read a book - and just look at the sky while making a glass of wine last a long time. The way they enjoy their leisure time and their friends and family, and insist on putting the latter first, may not be the the road to national productivity and efficiency, but it may well be the path to a happier life. We've always loved having people over or spending time over a home-cooked meal with friends; here this is common, and a shared pleasure no matter what people's social or economic circumstances may be. There's so much less self-comparison, insecurity, anxiety and judgment. People are more accepting of difference, and happier and more contented with themselves, just as they are.

Having spent the first fifty years of my life in the American pressure-cooker of higher education, over-achievement, self-employment and entrepreneurial business-creation, as well as trying to move forward in my own artistic pursuits, without any social "safety net," there was a constant demand for self-direction and self-discipline, and acceptance of competition.Furthermore, as self-employed people, we were responsible for saving and paying for everything, including our own health care, insurance, retirement. That creates a huge amount of pressure, even without having children to educate. I don't know if people who haven't been there can really see what this does to individuals and to a society; likewise I wonder if you can really understand the lack of it if you haven't lived for a while under a different system.

I may be happiest when I'm working hard, learning, creating, and collaborating, and think that will always be true, but I'm not too old to see the good in different ways of life and gentler values. I'm grateful to Canada and especially to Quebec, and hope they always stay this way.

Toward that end, we registered to vote last week, and will be casting our first Canadian ballots in the upcoming elections. Together with our newly-arrived Canadian passports, these were the final steps toward really becoming dual citizens, and I'm awfully happy to have finally arrived at this point.

Related articles

Becoming Canadian

A New Look for Phoenicia

While adding some new pages to the Phoenicia Publishing website the other day, I managed to delete the home page. While reconstructing it, I decided -- whether fearlessly or foolishly - to try out a new theme, and ended up giving a facelift to the whole site (and devoting way more time to it this week than I'd planned, but, hey.) It's something I've wanted to do for a while but I guess I needed this push by fate!

Please check it out and if you see anything amiss, please let me know. I'm always interested in your opinions about the content, look, fonts, sizing, ease of use,  navigation. The photo-headers are new, and may change with the seasons; we'll see. What do you like, or not?

In addition to getting ready for our new publications coming later this fall, I was also posting a new Phoenicia blog post, with more behind-the-scenes photographs of the recording process during last month's sessions for the forthcoming Jon Appleton CD.

And there's a new sign-up for the Phoenicia email newsletter, no more than twice yearly, but it will offer special prices, pre-order offers, and occasional giveaways, exclusive to the subscribers. Some of you are faithful readers and much appreciated customers, and are already on the list, but if you aren't and would like to be, please do sign up!

Still Life as Self-Portrait

Coffee pot, fruit, and bowl of almonds on a Druze chest. Pencil on paper, 2002.

Another version of the same subject. I love how free this drawing is.

This week I've been taking breaks from designing, carving, and printing illustrations for my Annunciation project by doing some studio cleaning and organizing. I started with my eleven-drawer flat file, where I keep most of my finished paintings, drawings, and prints, as well as supplies like acid-free tissue and glassine paper. All the big paper sheets go into a larger five-drawer flat file beneath this one. Anyway, I went through two drawers of old drawings and threw out a lot of uninteresting work that had no reason to be kept -- and that felt really good.

Coffee pot, fruit, almonds, and tambourine on a Druze chest. Pen and ink on paper, 2002.

But in the process, I found many things I certainly wanted to keep, including some sheets from large, old sketchbooks, such as the drawings in this post.

I was interested to see that even though they date from 2002, they're in a style quite similar to what I've been using lately. In some ways they're looser than the current ones - which doesn't please me so much, though it may be partly a result of the much-larger paper size here - but they're also more derivative of the Matisse and Picasso drawings I was poring over at the time. I'm curious to see that even back then, I was using some of the same favorite objects that have appeared in my work in recent years: the family coffee pot, the hourglass-shaped brass vase, the carved Druze chest.

Hydrangeas and blown glass rooster. Pencil on paper, 2002.

A still life, as I think I've written before, can be just as much a self-portrait as a picture of one's own face. In 2002, in the aftermath of 9/11, I was working with interfaith peace groups and thinking hard about our own family's Middle Eastern heritage, trying to put that into some sort of context with my own family background. The flowers in the vase above were certainly from my own garden, and represented me; the blown glass orb in front of them was part of a trade I had made with a Vermont artist, Paedra Branhall. My mother-in-law had died not long before; this glass rooster was hers, from a collection made by her Armenian uncle. The silver bowl with pinched corners was a family heirloom from my father-in-law's family in Damascus; those were also his leather-bound books. He was well into his mid-90s,  and I was beginning to try to collect some of his stories, which eventually became the "Fig and the Orchid" series here. And my husband and I were starting to think about the possibility of moving to Canada. Looking back, these choices form a much clearer portrait than I ever consciously realized at the time.

Here's a final drawing, this one in red Conte crayon on newsprint - which reminds me how much I love drawing in that particular medium.

Here, the blending of family histories is even more deliberate: the aloe plant is from my father-in-law, the lemons a Middle Eastern symbol; the tile at right was from Rhodes and belonged to my mother-in-law; the brass hourglass vase had been on my own grandmother's desk; the little covered ceramic pot at left was made by my mother, and the flowered cloth was one I had bought myself. Thirteen years later, I still use these objects (minus the aloe plant and lemons, of course!) in my daily life and in my drawings, as a natural matter of course, not deliberate exploration or statement: there's something reassuring about that.

 

Songs for the End of Summer

Northeastern University crew team members practicing on the Charles River.

Well, I seem to be neglecting my blog lately, and a lot of it is due to the fact that in August, we northern people tend to get a little desperate about the end of summer. Just as happens around the holidays, there's a flurry of last-minute warm weather activity and invitations from friends who've been meaning to get together for months. Picnics that were talked about in June finally materialize on the spur of the moment, hikes and swims and trips out of the city suddenly loom in importance, and people who've wanted to visit the city in good weather turn up on your doorstep. All of that has been happening, and I just haven't been "here" very much.

Jon Appleton and Yoshiko Kline discuss one of the pieces in Jon's "Suite des Hommages"

I also flew to Boston for a few days, working in the WGBH recording studios with composer Jon Appleton, pianist Yoshiko Kline, and audio engineer Frank Cunningham, to produce a new CD of Jon's piano music that will come out this fall.

Yoshiko practicing.

One of the days I was there was Hiroshima Day, and I thought how life-affirming it was to spend that day remembering, but also making music with a Japanese-American pianist. We didn't speak of it, but the thought was in my heart. And the performances were absolutely fantastic: I'm very excited about the recording, and anxious to share it with some of you who've become fans of Jon's music.

During breaks from the studio, I was able to take a few walks along the Charles River, watching the crew teams practice, and taking a look at community gardens, Boston-Style. There were a lot of bunnies living a gourmet life in the gardens, and Jon, who speaks many languages, enjoyed talking to some of the Russian gardeners who had plots in the area.

I send apologies to my Boston friends: there was no time to come and see you on this trip, but I really hope to rectify that sometime soon -- probably not before the end of summer though!

Stalking Primitive Plants in the Laurentian Foothills

When setting off into the woods, our friends S. and G. always wear bear-bells and mosquito veils. We didn't see any bears during our stay in the near-wilderness two weekends ago (though bears regularly ransack our friends' bird feeders) but we certainly attracted a lot of hungry mosquitoes! I did OK with a netting over my neck and ears, long sleeves and pants, and a liberal spray of musk oil on my hat, wrists, and ankles.

This area, northeast of Montreal, is part of the North Woods in the foothills of the Laurentian Mountains. It's a mature mixed deciduous/coniferous forest containing paper birch, maples, aspens, oaks, mountain ash, pines, spruce, firs and junipers.

The understory is sparse except in clearings, where you find a lot of lichens, clubmosses, mosses, and some ferns. From the mix of species, you can tell that you're either getting up high or going north, and that the soil is quite acidic.

Redcap or "British soldier" lichens

I've always been interested in primitive plants: lichens, mosses, clubmosses, ferns. Lichens are very cool, because they are actually aren't a plant at all, but a combination of an algae and a fungi living together to form what's known as a "composite organism." As one website stated, "Lichen are pioneers in places that are too harsh or limited for most other organisms. They grow on bare rock, sand, cleared soil, dead wood, bones, rusty metal, and bark. They're able to shut down metabolically for long periods of time when conditions are unfavorable, and can survive extremes of heat or cold and long periods of drought." In Iceland, for instance, lichens and mosses are the first species to colonize new lava fields.

Growing among these lichens, I found several species of wildflowers, new to me, that are in the Pyroloideae (below). And when looking them up, I learned that these are both mixotropic plants-- they gain their nutrition not only from photosynthesis, but also from a symbiotic relationship with fungi.

 

This is a Pyrola, though I'm not sure which of the thirty species it is.

 

This one is (I think) Chimaphilia umbellata. The name means "loves winter" (from the Greek: cheima 'winter' and philos 'lover'); both of these plants have leaves that stay green in the winter. Chimaphilias were used by the Native Americans as a treatment for rheumatism, and it was thought that chewing the leaves warded off tuberculosis. Pyrola americana, or American Wintergreen, is another related plant (also found in these woods); wintergreen oil contains salicylates (like aspirin) that act as painkillers but can be toxic at higher doses.

 

Like the lichens, these Chimaphilias seemed to be thriving here: under some trees on one side of the clearing, I found a huge patch of them.

 

Mosses also thrive here. These are primitive, non-flowering plants that grow close to the ground and reproduce by spores (borne on the tops of the reddish-orange stalks you can see here.)

 

Clubmosses, or Lycopodiums, are some of my favorite plants. Like moss, they reproduce with spores. They're related to the earliest plants that had a vascular system for carrying water and nutrients up into the plant from the soil - an obvious prerequisite for the evolution of plants that can grow tall and bear specialized tissues such as flowers. The northeastern clubmoss species are relatively rare; local populations have been damaged by the overuse of endangered clubmosses in Christmas decorations. Lycopodium powder -- the dried spores of common clubmoss - was used by the Victorians in theater to produce gunpowder effects, because it burns brightly and quickly but without a lot of heat.

I love being in woods like these, and to prowl around and discover some of the reasons why certain species exist there. It's a harsh environment: the soil is acidic, the rocks are close to the surface, the winter temperature is very cold. Still, nature evolves, and the result is a rich mixture of species that are adapted to survive.